sandall

Indeed. Confusingly, this also applies to outdoor horn-flares, though you almost invariably see them mounted horizontally, probably because of how the brackets are attached.

(Assuming it's possible to mount one in the centre) a single column in unlikely to cover more than the centre of your congregation (mounted on its side it will only cover a very narrow area!!). Columns follow the normal laws of physics (inverse-square law & all that), so if they sound louder at the back this has to be a function of the building structure & the direction of fire, rather than a property of the speaker.

Maybe things are different in Sydney, but over here am-dram in a church hall suggests (a) it's someone else's building, so the chances of being allowed to put a screw into the stage are zilch, & (b) the volunteer lampy (singular) is unlikely to have a budget for anything with a fan in it🙂.

Haven't come across the Apex mic, but looking at the "spec" & reviews it looks more like a super-cardioid than a true shotgun, so not much pickup at the distance you are using. Also, in general the more open mics you have the less gain-before-feedback you can get. On that width stage I would be using no more than 4 decent shotgun mics (+ 1 in the middle if recording in stereo, to stop DSC voices leaping from side to side). I use ME80s, which give a good balance between vocals & the (sometimes quite large) "pit" orchestra, but there is a wide range of pro & semi-pro short shotguns to chose from. I've had mixed experience with boundary mics & only bad experiences with choir mics (no gain, lots of feedback), but they obviously work for some. As Robin suggests, carpeting the stage can make a huge difference, though you may not have that option.

Maybe worth giving Canford a call?

Don't see why not (though I've never tried to check deviation), at least to see whether 2 beltpacks on nomimally the same freq actually are.

Chatting to a couple of people involved in making high-end fixtures recently I got the impression that the LEDs themselves may well last for how many tens of thousands of hours the manufacturers wish to claim, but in cheaper units the drivers, being cut to the bone, probably won't outlast their tungsten equivalents. Well-made fixtures CAN last - the lamps in the original news set at BH have been running 24/7 for 9 years & are still within 90% of brightness & original colour.

I suspect that 25000uF of non-polarized might be hard to find (& rather large). I was never very happy with the idea that if an electrolytic went short it was going to put 30V DC across my expensive speakers.

Ok , so it's a couple of big capacitors in parallel in either the hot or cold leg, with a bit of frequency correction thrown in, rather like the output circuits of most early transistor power amps. If it works, why were (really smart) designers back then quoting minimum loads of 4 or 8 ohms?

Can sympathise. Just after I went freelance a slip in the shower after the get-in of an Edinburgh fringe show cost me 6 weeks of lucrative broadcast work (& possibly a whole load of follow-up bookings). Not to mention some very painful ladder-work changeovers.

Mine too.

My lighting kit is mostly tungsten, so repairable for ever, but I have a room full of kit I've bought, but never used in anger, built, but never used in anger, mixers that I could repair, but will never get around to doing so, various replay decks that could be repaired by throwing more money than they're worth at them, & amplifiers that even if I mended I would never trust in anger. My other half's solution would be to hire a skip. Maybe she has a point.

Indeed Paul. In this case it was just a flippant way of saying "Made in China", as virtually everything I tested had been. Mind you, the OP's problem isn't limited to imports; you can spend a lot of time with various forms of abrasion to get a decent continuity reading on most UK generics (especially CCT).

A problem I constantly met with PAT testing new "China Export" marked sound & lighting gear.

Good point. An elderly small school installation is probably still all tungsten (so probably also includes a load of dead lamps)

I was somewhere in the South China Sea during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Having recently read "On the Beach" I was more than a bit concerned that there might not be a home to go back to🙁.

Exactly that. Mixer channel & output faders at about 75-80% (on many small mixers this will be marked as 0dB on channel faders & -10db on master faders), adjust input trim pots to give something sensible on the meters, THEN lift the amp's level control(s) to give the volume you require in the space. As a rule of thumb (assuming I've picked the right gear for the job) I tend to run amps at about 70%, but for speech this might need to be as low as 30%; for rock it might be nearer full.

Would you rather have had the robotic American we got on this side of the border?

In my freelance TV days I worked for 2 companies that were constantly teetering on the edge. For the studio I only accepted another day's work when they had paid for the last (so when they folded I only lost 1 day's fee); for the facilities house they made sure any outstanding invoices were paid before the Christmas party 🙂.

Rather more expensive than a £2 USB/SD card replay module & a £0 pink-noise recording?

You may have more luck if you can accept an external source of pink noise (phone app, mp3, CD, etc) or, if you are prepared to do a bit of engineering, you could fit a USB/ SD card module into the GEQ case, eg a TF/U module (30 x 50 mm, dirt cheap).

Time for a call to the chaps at A&H?

If you'd removed them a couple of months ago...........🙁

You're welcome

Same thread, similar size capsules. Only difference seems to be that the Beta58 has a blue rubber strip in the groove, but you could probably prise that off.